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Take Your Values And Make Them Your Cause

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Most companies have corporate values that they hope embody their company, their employees, and the way they wish to be viewed by the public. Unfortunately, many organizations’ values statements are pages long. Too dense to be remembered and too complex to be ingrained in the company culture. Ours were.

We’ve learned there is power in simplicity, and that is why we at National Life Group have shifted our focus to three simple, authentic values: Do good. Be good. Make good. Just six words, but we’ve been able to translate them to a cause and a mission that drives everything we do. You and your company can do the same.

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About the Author

Mehran AssadiMehran Assadi serves as president and chief executive officer of National Life Group. Since taking that role in 2009, he has led major growth in sales of National Life’s life and annuity products and worked to build a culture of collaboration, engagement and empowerment among employees. Mehran and National Life Group were highly featured in the recently published book CAUSE! A Business Strategy for Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness, by Drs. Jackie and Kevin Freiberg, about the power of creating cause-related companies.

National Life Group® is a trade name of National Life Insurance Company, Montpelier, VT, Life Insurance Company of the Southwest, Addison, TX, and their affiliates. Each company of National Life Group is solely responsible for its own financial condition and contractual obligations. Life Insurance Company of the Southwest is not an authorized insurer in New York and does not conduct insurance business in New York.

References

1. American Enthusiasm to Shop with a Conscience at Record-High, but Doubts About Corporate Impact Persist, Cause Marketing Forum, October 2013. http://www.causemarketingforum.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bkLUKcOTLkK4E&b=6430205&ct=13344211&notoc=1
2. Culture of Purpose, Deloitte, 2014. http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/about-deloitte/us-leadership-2014-core-beliefs-culture-survey-040414.pdf
3. 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer Executive Summary, Edelman, 2014. http://www.scribd.com/doc/200429962/2014-Edelman-Trust-Barometer#fullscreen

Management Observation Program Best Practice 17 – Paired Observations

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StrategyDriven Management Observation Program Best Practice ArticleManagers translate leadership’s vision into the day-to-day actions of the workforce. They do this through their decisions, published standards, and operational procedures. They reinforce desired behaviors through organizational performance measures and management observations. But how do executives ensure their manager and supervisor direct reports understand and properly translate and reinforce their vision with the workforce? One method of doing so is through the conduct of paired observations.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

StrategyDriven Enterprises Launches an Online Talent Management Program Forum

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StrategyDriven Enterprises launched an online talent management program forum; providing leaders access to decades of first-hand experience in programmatically acquiring, developing, and retaining high-quality employees.
 
StrategyDriven Talent Management ForumStrategyDriven Enterprises, LLC announced the launch of an online Talent Management Forum; providing innovative thought leadership and collaboration opportunities to help executives and managers programmatically drive the acquisition, development, and retention of high-quality employees.

“When highly skilled and knowledgeable people give the full measure of their creativity, intellect, and effort to achieving the organization’s goals, truly remarkable performance results,” explains Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Thus, talented personnel are the lifeblood of every organization.”

“Implementing StrategyDriven’s recommended talent management practices can help enhance any organization’s ability to attract, develop, and retain top talent,” says Karen Juliano, StrategyDriven’s Editor-in-Chief. “This is achieved through deliberate actions that make employees feel valued and respected, inspired and motivated while at the same time being managed effectively and efficiently.”

Contributed to, by highly experienced business leaders, StrategyDriven’s online Talent Management Forum provides actionable methods and tools executives and managers can use to implement and enhance key components of their talent management program including:

  • Talent Acquisition – identification of near and long-term personnel knowledge, skills, and experiences needed combined with the effective search, vetting, and signing-on of employees whose backgrounds meet these needs
  • Talent Development – enhancement of employee knowledge, skills, and experiences so to prepare a sufficient number of individuals to meet the organization’s near and long-term talent needs as circumstances dictate
  • Talent Retention – creation of a workplace environment that attracts and retains the highly talented individuals needed for the organization’s success while concurrently ensuring the departure of those personnel not contributing sufficient value to the organization

The StrategyDriven Talent Management Forum’s thought leadership documents are being distributed to StrategyDriven’s clients, including some of the world’s most respected companies. These documents are available at: www.StrategyDriven.com/talent-management.

Checklist for Influencers: questions for sellers, coaches, leaders, change agents

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Most of you are really good at what you do: as influencers, sellers, coaches, change agents, or leaders, your intuition, excellent skills, and history of success guide your ability to facilitate change for your clients. And yet… Using conventional models and questions – both designed to drive the predisposition of the facilitator – it’s inevitable that your interactions will have bias, and will unwittingly restrict possible outcomes accordingly. Here’s a checklist of questions to help you determine the extent of your bias:

When attempting to influence someone (as sellers, leaders, etc.) can you be certain that your natural assumptions, unconscious expectations, and goals play no/little role in biasing or restricting the outcome?

Are you aware of, and make allowances for, your full range of biases? Can you think of the role your biases play that might predispose outcomes?

Can you think of any of your Communication Partner’s (CP) biases that were overlooked but ended up determining the outcome? How do you manage your CP’s biases, triggers, filters, and assumptions to expand choice and possibility, and avoid unconscious resistance, fallout, and restricted results? (Not to mention lost sales and difficult implementations.)

Do you know what you’d need to do differently to enter a conversation without bias or assumptions to facilitate your client in determining their own systemic parameters?
Are you aware how your curiosity and questions are subjectively biased toward the goal you think you need to reach – and 1. potentially lose a more congruent outcome, 2. alienate many who might need your solutions?

How can you be certain you’re speaking to all the right people, or using the best questions for them, specifically, to gather the most appropriate information given their idiosyncratic knowledge and culture?

Do your current methods of avoiding resistance work?

Are you aware of how much your brain filters what you hear and how much more is being said than what you’re hearing? Are you aware of the cost of misunderstanding what’s going on outside of your goals and expectations?

How much of the early data you gather turns out to be accurate? How do you know when/if you ever get to the accurate data? How do your expectations and the bias in your questions interfere with the Other’s recognition of the full fact pattern (largely unconscious at the start)?

What would you need to believe differently to consider that your current skill set, biased mind set, and habitual set of expectations is creating a diminished ability to influence the full extent of real change and avoid resistance?

How often do you assume something is ‘working’ or was successful – a coaching client was changing, or a buyer was going to buy – and you were wrong? Do you know for certain what happened behind-the-scenes that caused the failure and you could have circumvented?

Are you aware of how your own biases, assumptions, triggers, and filters, have gotten in the way of success – or do you believe you’re right and the other person wrong/stupid?

What would you need to believe differently to be willing to add some new skills to use less bias? To enable your CPs to recognize and manage their unconscious systems elements that have informed all choices and need to be shifted for change (a purchase, an implementation) to occur so they can easily buy, change or adopt your terrific material?

Facilitating Choice

We’re all in the business of influencing, or attempting to get what we want. Yet we fail a very high percentage of the time; sellers loses 94% of their prospects; coaches lose 70% of follow on clients; implementations fail 97% of the time. It’s not our fault: we fail because our conventional skills are focused on:

  • content push
  • premature goal setting
  • the facilitator’s expectations
  • listening for pre-determined details

and miss the unspoken metamessages, values, history, rules, and consensus issues that make up our CPs status quo. It’s possible to enable our CP partners to do the change work from within, without us biasing and limiting possibility to our own subjective view.

I have developed a generic change management model with a unique skill set that facilitates decision making and change at the core unconscious, systemic level and avoids bias and resistance. I developed it over many decades by coding my own Asperger’s systemizing brain and designing a new form of listening, a new type of question, and coding the steps that happen unconsciously during all change. I’ve trained it to 100,000 sales people, coaches, leaders, and negotiators globally. It’s a model that must be learned and added to your current skill set; it takes some time to learn and practice because it’s so different from conventional models. But it’s scalable. DuPont, for example, trained 8,000 sales people and KPMG trained 6,000 consultants.

Using this new decision facilitation model, you’ll be able to help others determine how to quickly and congruently buy, change, implement, etc. themselves in the area you are facilitating. No more delayed sales cycles or lost prospects; no more failed implementations; no more resistance to change. You can close 40% of all qualified prospects from first call, in half the time; you can help coaching clients discover their unconscious incongruences on the first call; you can implement large change events with no resistance.

I can teach you how to unhook from your personal biases and enter conversations in a way that leads/ discovers/ creates all that’s possible through win/win, servant leadership and congruent change. Imagine being able to enter every conversation and have it reach its most ethical, financial, and creative possibility. Imagine.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

To contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] or go to www.didihearyou.com to choose your favorite digital site to download your free book.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the job. Or is it?

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Hate your job? Things at work not going your way? Productivity down? Not earning enough? Thinking of leaving? Here are some job realities you may want to consider before flying to another light-bulb.

First figure out the WHOLE why. You need to take a deep look into the situation before you decide to move. What is causing these feelings of unrest, distrust or unhappiness?

Here’s a list of reasons – BUT, don’t just read them. If you’re unhappy at work, list the ones that apply to you and write a “why” sentence next to it. Don’t just confirm the reason in your mind, go deeper to discover the “reason behind the reason.”

Here’s your self “why” test:

  • Belief system failing in product – you don’t think your product is really better than the competition’s.
  • Belief system failing in company – you’ve lost faith in the company’s ability to perform.
  • Poor service after you sell it – continuing complaint calls are lowering your morale.
  • Boss is a jerk – for one reason or another he or she hasn’t earned your respect.
  • Poor management – acting in their own self interest, can’t sell better than you.
  • Conflicts with coworkers or management – too much who-struck-John. Politics.
  • Poor training – you aren’t getting adequately prepared to sell.
  • High turnover – many good people leaving.
  • Too much work – you work too hard, and you don’t want to put forth the effort.
  • Poor pay – low pay for your effort.
  • Poor working conditions – lack of sales support.
  • Business hurting – the economy and sales are less prevalent or slower.
  • No upward opportunity – you’re stuck in non-growth mode.

And of course the one reason you may have omitted is – it may be you.

Self-test for these:

  • Your poor attitude
  • Home life problems
  • Money problems
  • Drinking or other self-abuse stupidity
  • Your poor sales skills
  • Your poor work habits
  • Poor performance on your part
  • Placing blame rather than taking responsibility
  • Stress (caused by one or many of the above)

Well, that’s an “ouch” test, huh? Did you find your “thorn?” Did you discover “why?” – or did you already know, and I just confirmed it. So now that your skin is itching with the reality, what are you going to do about it?

Well, not so fast there, Sparky.

I’d like you to consider some deeper reflection first.

DO THIS: When you find your biggest reason(s), ask yourself “why?” four times to get to the bottom of the reason. That would be the REAL reason.

Let’s say you selected the reason: My boss is a jerk – OK, why? “Well, for one thing, he’s constantly on me to produce.” OK, why? “Well, because he says I’m not seeing enough people, nor am I closing enough deals.” OK why? “Because it’s harder to make sales. People aren’t buying.”

Sounds like it ain’t the boss after all – it’s you.
That’s not a boss issue. That’s a training, sales skills and intensity issue.

All salespeople suffer from two incurable diseases:
1. The grass-is-always-greener syndrome
2. The moth-to-a-light-bulb syndrome

ASK YOURSELF FIRST:
What are you really looking for?
If you’re going to switch, will this move you up or forward?
Can you fix what you have?
What would you really like to be doing?
If you leave here where will you go?
What risks do you take by leaving this job?
How will a new job get you closer to your real career goals?
How will a new job get you closer to your real monetary goals?

If you decide to leave, don’t leave for the wrong reasons, and don’t leave the wrong way. I have just given you the “why” formula. That will get you to an understanding of your self-thinking. Then there’s the “how you will leave” part.

2.5 more rules apply:
1. Leave professionally. Give notice. Tell the truth.
2. Leave ethically. Give back everything. Don’t “take” anything with you. Especially customer lists or any trade secrets.
2.5 Leave positively. No bad words or lawsuits. Just peacefully go. Leave with your reputation in tact. Leave with a reference.

To leave or not to leave? That is the question. Your job is to find the answer. Your own answer. It’s a big decision. A career decision. An advancement decision. And yes, a money decision.

My advice is: make sure you know the REAL reason. And make sure you do it in a way that would make your mother proud.

If you’re one of the fortunate few who LOVE their job, please pass this on to someone whining about how green the grass might be someplace else.

FREE GitBit. I have one more piece of advice about your job. Something to think about everyday. Go to www.gitomer.com, enter JOB in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].